Baron Munchhausen's Sequence
Combinatorics
2013-06-25 v1 Discrete Mathematics
Data Structures and Algorithms
History and Overview
Abstract
We investigate a coin-weighing puzzle that appeared in the all-Russian math Olympiad in 2000. We liked the puzzle because the methods of analysis differ from classical coin-weighing puzzles. We generalize the puzzle by varying the number of participating coins, and deduce a complete solution, perhaps surprisingly, the objective can be achieved in no more than two weighings regardless of the number of coins involved.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1003.3406,
title = {Baron Munchhausen's Sequence},
author = {Tanya Khovanova and Konstantin Knop and Alexey Radul},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.3406},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
26 pages